Are you Gonna Kill yourself a Heritige breed turkey this Thanksgiving?
I’ve never offed a turkey before. The guys with whom I occasionally massacre chickens are also raising turkeys, of a variety of heritage breeds. I know they’ve got Narragansetts and Bourbon Reds, as well as Beltsville Small Whites. I live near Beltsville, so I’m hoping to score one of those, just for nostalgia. The chickens go rather easily. A bird suspended upside down gets almost preternaturally calm. Small bird-processing operations have metal cones that they use to hold the birds. But these guys are an ultra-small operation and they don’t have turkey-sized cones. They told me that last year they basically had to run a rope up a pulley in a tree and hoist the bird into the air. They they slit its throat and drained its blood, just like they would for a chicken. It sounds kind of comical, but it’s done in all seriousness. If I’m going to eat the flesh of an animal this Thanksgiving, I want it to be one who lived well and died as well as possible, too. Then I’m going to have to figure
